Ugh, what a crappy week.

[RachelleDrew]

Sorry, I just need to vent. This entire thread is going to come across as childish, but I can't help it, I need to get things off my chest.

I'm finding it very hard to deal with things right now in general, this week has just evolved into such a predicament. To begin with, I've just found myself to feel very run down by my friends. The majority of the people I associate with are far older than I am, and while I feel like I fit in better with the older crowd, I'm sick of adults coming to me with their problems when I have very little life experience to help them with. I have no problem trying to help my friends and family, but I just feel like i've become a dumping ground for everyone else's problems. Then when I go to someone for help with trouble of my own, i'm told to suck it up.

I'm barely in my twenties, I may be married and have a child, but in many ways i'm still just a kid. With that in mind, I don't like it when my parents discuss their marital issues with me like i'm one of their friends, I don't think it's appropriate, it makes me uncomfortable.

I'm not a psychologist or a cop, I don't know how to help someone who is in an abusive relationship. I have a friend (as i've mentioned in a previous post) who came to me, and i'm far younger than her, for help when she should have gone to a cop/social worker/psychologist/lawyer/priest/SOMEBODY WHO KNOWS WHAT THEY ARE DOING. I'm constantly terrified that she or her kids are going to wind up dead and since i've been so involved since the beginning that it will somehow be my fault.

I'm tired of getting brushed off by my son's pediatricians. Yes, this is my first child but I freaking know when something is not right with him. Don't be condescending and say that i'm overreacting because this is my first child. I'M PAYING YOU A LOT OF MONEY, YOU OWE IT TO ME TO SHUT UP AND LISTEN TO ME WHEN I'M SAYING THERE IS SOMETHING WRONG. Even if you think it's nothing, what harm could it possibly do to run a few tests to assuage my fears? That's right, none.

My husband is angry with me and there is 100% nothing I can do about it. I made mistakes in my life, long before I ever met him. He knew the extent of those mistakes long before we had children and got married. It never bothered him before, but now all of a sudden it does? I think it's funny that ever since he got re-involved with the church he's all of a sudden become very ashamed of me and resentful. Newsflash: If the two of us were perfect and without past mistakes we wouldn't need the church so much in the first place. What does it matter now anyway? These things happened so long before I even knew him. I've never deceived or manipulated him, ever. If he was so distressed about past mistakes then he shouldn't have freaking married me. This is the only real source of contention we've ever had and every time we discuss it I feel like we come to a solution, and then a few weeks later he's upset about it again. I thought that I was forgiven of these things, and that they could be forgotten. Did my baptism mean nothing to him? Apparently.

Uggghhhh.

I'm sorry, i'm just finding it very difficult to deal with life right now. I just wish I could disappear.

[RachelleDrew]

ON A MORE POSITIVE NOTE.

Health insurance is a pain, but i'm so thankful I have it. We got our quarterly statement this morning from them showing all of our medical billing activity from the past year. Between my months in the hospital, Eli's months in the hospital and all of the tests, ambulances, doctors, lifeflights, etc the bill would have been huge if not for insurance.

For the entirety of my pregnancy care and my son's stay in the NICU we would have paid almost SEVENTY THOUSAND DOLLARS if we weren't covered. I am so thankful for this, if we got stuck with those bills my husband and I would have no other choice but to go bankrupt at 21 and 19 years old. Not all in life is awful, we got super blessed on that one.

[StrawberryFields]

Don't Give Up.

YouTube - Don't Give Up, You Are Loved

[Truegrits]

I'm tired of getting brushed off by my son's pediatricians. Yes, this is my first child but I freaking know when something is not right with him. Don't be condescending and say that i'm overreacting because this is my first child. I'M PAYING YOU A LOT OF MONEY, YOU OWE IT TO ME TO SHUT UP AND LISTEN TO ME WHEN I'M SAYING THERE IS SOMETHING WRONG. Even if you think it's nothing, what harm could it possibly do to run a few tests to assuage my fears? That's right, none.

Rachelle, get a second opinion! You know your son better than any doctor. A doctors opinion, without testing, is just an educated guess based on information you give.

If he is NOT paying attention to you, go see someone else!

[MorningStar]

With my second son, I knew he had acid reflux and the doctor said he cried after he spat-up because it was a "reflex" to protect him from inhaling it. The poor guy would spit up all day and would cry for 10 minutes (at least) every time. I took him to another doctor, she said it was reflux, gave him medicine, and he was like a different baby after that - much happier. Another friend of mine knew her son had swallowed something and the doctor insisted he hadn't because he couldn't hear any weird sounds to indicate it when he listened to him breathe. She took him somewhere else and they ended up fishing out a penny.

Doctors do not know everything.

With your parents sharing their marital problems, have you tried telling them it makes you uncomfortable?

That stinks your husband is acting like that. I've been married for almost 12 years and it still makes my husband jealous that I kissed other guys before him. It's not a huge deal, but he doesn't like to think about that.

[Vort]

Rachelle, I'm sorry to hear things are tough. I have observed that life is like sailing on the ocean: sometimes you're on a swell and sometimes you're in a trough. Sounds like you're in a trough at the moment. If you grit your teeth and try to smile, soon enough you'll be back up.

I'm very sorry to hear about your husband's issues. You're right, it is not fair. Don't know what to tell you, except try to be patient with him and try not to take his problems personally (though obviously that's going to be hard not to do). One if his present issues is dealing with your past issues. This can be very difficult for some people. It's not fair, but part of being married is learning to live with unfairness. Just look at it as an opportunity to be Christ-like. :)

[funkymonkey]

To begin with, I've just found myself to feel very run down by my friends. The majority of the people I associate with are far older than I am, and while I feel like I fit in better with the older crowd, I'm sick of adults coming to me with their problems when I have very little life experience to help them with. I have no problem trying to help my friends and family, but I just feel like i've become a dumping ground for everyone else's problems. Then when I go to someone for help with trouble of my own, i'm told to suck it up.

Totally hear ya. My friends are all in their 40s/50s. I love my friends... I'm a friend to them, but they will tend to be parents to me instead of my friends.

I'm tired of getting brushed off by my son's pediatricians. Yes, this is my first child but I freaking know when something is not right with him. Don't be condescending and say that i'm overreacting because this is my first child. I'M PAYING YOU A LOT OF MONEY, YOU OWE IT TO ME TO SHUT UP AND LISTEN TO ME WHEN I'M SAYING THERE IS SOMETHING WRONG. Even if you think it's nothing, what harm could it possibly do to run a few tests to assuage my fears? That's right, none.

Keep looking for a good doctor that will be willing to be thorough and will take the time to look for answers. Your own intuition is very important.

Good doctors are getting more and more difficult to find. General medicine teaches them to look for 80% of the possible problems...that the remaining 20% is really unlikely to happen, so they don't even think about those issues. But that 20% still involves a LOT of people...which is why so many people go undiagnosed.

I was sick with West Nile for three weeks (I was blind and having seizures) before my doctor finally said "Hmmm, maybe it's not the flu!" I went in every week for really scary problems that were popping up (like my heart stops beating..now I know that it was the virus attacking my brain) and they would just look at me and would say "hmmm, that's wierd" and would send me home. Come to find out later that I should have been hospitalized in the first week. I have spent thousands of dollars in my own money looking for solutions, answers, etc...I've gone to 12 different doctors, and was fortunate enough to find ONE was willing to be thorough and really help me. Finding that right doctor is hard to find (and one doctor alone might not have all the answers) but it is really worth it when you find him/her.

Trust your own intellect and instincts before a doctor's. I trusted what the doctor said, while I knew myself that something was really not right, I ignored every horrible symptom that came my way and now I'm paying for it with long term problems.

My husband is angry with me and there is 100% nothing I can do about it.

I'm sorry Rachelle. Marriage is friggin hard. You're not alone...going through "pits" is something that I think we all deal with!

...Doesn't it feel good to vent?!

Hang in there.

[beefche]

Just to lighten the mood a little.........

When your friends come to you for advice you can do the Lucy thing from the Peanuts comic strip. Set up a booth and charge $5.00 (she charges 5 cents, but hey, inflation!!!) and then give a very sarcastic or obvious answer. "Your arm hurts when you do that? Then don't do that." Just an option.

[WANDERER]

On the baby front: find a doctor that doesn't treat you like an idiot...they exist. Poor bedside manner is a professional cross to them...not to you.

On parents and adults seeking marital advice from you...don't give any...just make the appropriate compassionate responses. Most people won't hear or remember what you're saying anyway...just how you made them feel.

On your hubby....ask him to name all the women in the BOM (I didn't know...see Any Esthers in the BOM thread). You can actually do it on one hand. There's an Indian proverb No Life without Wife .....you can then continue to hold up four fingers ever after and mutter...no life except as wife. Oh I've kinda had a crappy week too. But I retain my sense of humour....and YES I am joking. DON'T DO THAT> LOL.

[NeuroTypical]

Venting is important. It helps you avoid killing your husband. (Or so my wife tells me)

[MorningStar]

I've never killed my husband.

[Palerider]

I've never killed my husband.

did you come close????......LOL!!!!

[MorningStar]

I almost gave him a heart attack when I threw my crutches down the stairs to make him think I was falling. I screamed too for added effect. He was really, really mad.

[RachelleDrew]

Everybody, thank you. I'm feeling much better today.

This is actually his "second opinion" doctor. We live in a very small area, and there are very few pediatricians in this area, only family practice doctors with few resources. Because of his issues due to prematurity it's very important that he sees a specialist. I've been scouring the internet for other places to take him, but there just aren't many doctors here. We may take him to my old pediatrician in Chicago if all else fails.

It's nothing that is life-threatening, but i'm sure it's making him terribly uncomfortable. The issue is his spitting up, I understand that it often looks like more than it is because of saliva and stomach acid but i've NEVER seen a baby spit up that much and he gets so upset when he does it. He literally spits up the entire contents of his stomach immediately after eating and then once he's done spitting up is starving again and crying for his bottle because he has nothing left in his stomach. Only to spit it all back up again, it's rediculous. We once fed him 2 ounces of milk and kept a large measuring cup under his chin for an hour, just to see how much he spat back up. He spat up 6 ounces of liquid. That just doesn't seem right. It leads me to believe that either he has too much stomach acid or is spitting up old feedings too (which makes sense because sometimes it smells quite spoiled)

We switched from breast milk to formula on a whim and that made a bit of a difference but not much. We thought it might have been something in my diet making him spit up the milk, but to this day we still haven't figured out what. We then tried a soy formula and that helped a bit too. However, it's still excessive. It makes him really upset too. Most babies when they spit up it just rolls out of their mouth and they barely notice it. But I think it burns his throat or something.

As for the husband situation, that one is a doozy. My husband grew up in the church, and being in such a protected environment kept him in the dark about a lot of nasty things most others go through in their lives. Which isn't a negative thing at all, but it has made him kind of naive. It makes it hard for him to understand where i've been.

To be perfectly fair I was dubious in the beginning when he said he didn't care about my past. He had just come out of a very bad relationship when we met and was just thrilled to be with someone who didn't treat him like dirt. So I think he just ignored those issues because he didn't want to spoil the first healthy releationship he had ever had.

I knew it would eventually come up, I just kind of hoped it wouldn't. Most of the mistakes i've made were trivial, but I can understand his concern for my previous drug use.

I've been clean for several years now. I gave up drugs without anyone's help, and never touched them since. I didn't have to get arrested or sent to rehab in order to pull myself out of the hole that I had dug. I just recognized that I was an addict and just made a decision to stop. I see this as a huge accomplishement, not something to be ashamed of. Most people with drug addictions cannot say that they got clean the first time they tried, if they ever got clean at all.

But as a person who has never so much as seen an illicit material in their life, much less been addicted to it, he doesn't see this as a victory, he sees it as a failure. I can only hope that he either changes his mind, or decides not to concentrate on it anymore.

I am thankful that this is the only issue we've ever really had, so I can't complain too much. I just don't want this to get any bigger than it already is. There is no need for us to fight over this and make it worse, I just wish he would stop bringing it up.

Edited August 14, 2008 by RachelleDrew

[MorningStar]

Rachelle, has your baby been tested for Pyloric Stenosis? My friend's baby had that. Or have they tried giving him Zantac? The poor little guy. I know how nightmarish it is to have your baby miserable after every feeding.

Pyloric Stenosis

[RachelleDrew]

I hate making self-diagnosis but after reading that article, I really have to wonder. He fits every single thing they listed, with the exception of malnourishment and weight loss. However, he's been on tons of vitamins since he was born which i'm sure would help in that area.

They haven't given him anything, they told me the usual, keep him upright after eating, burp him frequently during a feeding, smaller amounts at a time. Same old crap I already was doing. All the other babies i've been around their spitting up and vomiting pretty much halted around the fourth month. But his has just gotten worse. I have to keep in mind though that gestationally he's not quite three months so that could explain that one.

I think sometimes doctors just look at me and think "she's young and this is her first child, she's overreacting". I'm not a hysterical person when it comes to illness, i'm really not. Everything else, yeah. But sick kids don't bother me, so I really don't think i'm overreacting here.

Thanks for that article.

[MorningStar]

I would raise heck with those doctors. The least they could do is test him. They shouldn't underestimate mothers' instincts. And they are not the ones living with the child 24 hours a day.

[MorningStar]

I meant to add too, when my sister was pregnant, she had really itchy skin and she was told for months to put calamine lotion on. It didn't do a thing and her skin was raw. She kept complaining to her doctor and she wouldn't listen, so she went to an online forum and this woman said, "That sounds like the liver problem I had when I was pregnant. Have her test you for it." So my sister brought it up, she was tested, and yes she had it. Her doctor never had a patient with it before and she had to be induced because it causes your bile to back up and it can cross the umbilical cord and cause a stillbirth. I know doctors can't know everything, but I wish they would listen more and maybe research if there is another cause.

[RachelleDrew]

I meant to add too, when my sister was pregnant, she had really itchy skin and she was told for months to put calamine lotion on. It didn't do a thing and her skin was raw. She kept complaining to her doctor and she wouldn't listen, so she went to an online forum and this woman said, "That sounds like the liver problem I had when I was pregnant. Have her test you for it." So my sister brought it up, she was tested, and yes she had it. Her doctor never had a patient with it before and she had to be induced because it causes your bile to back up and it can cross the umbilical cord and cause a stillbirth. I know doctors can't know everything, but I wish they would listen more and maybe research if there is another cause.

Good golly, hopefully everything turned out okay.

When I was in high school I had a serious problem with vomiting, it was so bad that I was in the ER at least three times a month, and my parents took me to every doctor there was.

Finally we spoke to a doctor who said he though he might have a solution. I found it odd that he asked if I had any eating disorders, but brushed it off and told him no. He prescribed me a medication that he said would help stop the vomiting.

Two months later and my vomiting continued, but I had gained almost thirty pounds. I was so confused, we went to a specialist in Chicago and he knew almost immediately what the issue was, a rare disease called CVS. He wound up being right, and wanted to give me some new treatments, but needed to know my medical history. He called all my doctors up and then myself and my parents back after a couple of days and informed them that the medication I was put on before was a medicine they gave people for freaking Bulimia, and that's why I gained so much weight. He even put on my file that he thought I had an ED and was not emotionally ready to accept treatment or the truth about my disease.

He was almost as angry as my parents and I were, because he lied about what the medication was for and never mentioned that he thought I was Bulimic. Apparently, this happens all the time with this disease, and has since taught me that doctors can sometimes overlook issues.

On another note, it seems everyone in my family has some sort of gastric-intestional disorder. I'm sadly not surprised my son has had problems.

[MorningStar]

Oh wow! CVS might be what I have. I threw-up for three months about two weeks after college started. We went on a jazz choir retreat and our director kept us up until 2am every night, then the last night he had us stay up all night to watch the sunset. I got a terrible migraine, felt really nauseous, turned pale, and I was nauseous for about a week. Then I woke up one morning with the chills and was throwing-up. I thought I had the flu, but then I figured the flu doesn't ever last for a month. I went through test after test and they even removed by gall bladder, but it was healthy. I stopped throwing-up two weeks before that surgery, but the doctor thought it was still necessary. Then when I still wasn't feeling that great, a doctor diagnosed me with IBS, put me on amitryptiline, I gained 25 pounds in a month on that, it didn't help, and then years later I was diagnosed with lymphocytic colitis, which some doctors say can cause vomiting, but it's usually the other end that's the problem. I quit college because I was so sick. I also had vomiting for weeks at a time from elementary school through high school, which made it very hard to keep up with my homework and my ability to concentrate. It's been a nightmare. And I tend to get "stomach flus" that no one else in my family gets. Like two weeks ago when I had to go to the ER because I was dehydrated. Sometimes I throw-up like I've been poisoned. Thank you for mentioning CVS! That sounds like a definite possibility on top of my colitis problem. What do you do to treat it?

[MorningStar]

Oh, and yes, my sister had a healthy baby girl and she is currently undergoing fertility treatments to try to have another one. :)

[RachelleDrew]

I currently take Zofran at night before I go to sleep. I also have to take heartburn meds now because all the years of vomiting caused problems. But so far, not a day of throwing up. Now if I have the stomach flu it doesn't work, but that's no biggie.

Although the first few months of pregnancy were awful, I couldn't take the Zofran until my second trimester, so the morning sickness on top of the CVS was insane. I had to consume about 3,00 calories a day just to keep healthy because I was throwing up so much. Once I got the okay to take it again, voila! No puking.

I have to admit, I am a slave to that Zofran. You forget to take it one night and you are pretty much done for the next day. BUT they offer it in a dissolvable tablet too, so if you are vomiting and can't keep the pill form down you just let a tablet dissolve under your tongue and within twenty minutes you are good as new.

I heart my pediatrician. I wish I was under 18 so I could still see him. Lol. It's quite the drive, but I think I may take my son that direction if things don't work out here.

[MorningStar]

Thank you! If I ever have another horrible episode like that, I will ask the doctor about Zofran. Whenever I get sick, I am terrified because I don't know if it's going to last for a day, weeks, or months. I am so bummed I didn't get to finish college. I will someday though. :) I was a music major, so you can't exactly do that online. There's this whole thing with them wanting you to show up and sing for stuff.

[Silver Girl]

Rachelle...

My son, who is now 16, had major stomach problems as an infant... He spit up constantly, and did a lot of projectile vomiting... Turns out he had severe Acid Reflux and was having spasms in the muscle at the top of his stomach (I am having a brain cramp and can't remember the name of the muscle)... He also had an abnormally small stomch...

I, too, switched from breast feeding to formula, thinking it was something I was eating... The doctor did an Upper GI Test on him, an X-Ray and an MRI... We treated it by giving him a liquid muscle relaxant and liquid Tagamet 15 minutes before he was due to eat... Then I could only give him 6 ounces at a time... If he was still hungry, I had to comfort and distract him for a least an hour or more, and start the process over again... The doctor also suggested adding Rice Cereal to his formula to make it thicker... This helped him feel more satisfied and also made it slosh less in his tummy, which helped it stay down better...

Not sure if this is what your little guy has, but bring it up with your doctor... Maybe it will help... God bless your little guy!!

Silver Girl : )

[MorningStar]

Silver Girl, that sounds horrible! You must've spent the entire day feeding him!